British chip maker ARM and the University College London (UCL) are to provide a new education kit for students that aims to improve their technical skills for the Internet of Things.

The ARM IoT Education Kit has been designed to encourage more graduates to stay in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) related careers, as an increasing number of STEM graduates embark on different professions.

The kit will be introduced this September by UCL’s department of electronic and electrical engineering for full-time MSc and Continuing Professional Development students.

The week-long course will see students learn how to use ARM’s mbed IoT Device Platform to create smartphone apps and control end devices, such as a mini-robots or a wearable health devices.

The announcement follows research, carried out by UCL with Oxford Policy and Research in2012, which found that 36% of men and 51% of females who had studied engineering at university had taken up non-STEM careers.

As for those who studied technology, 44% of males and 53% of females had taken up non-STEM careers.

Professor Izzat Darwazeh, head of communications and information systems at UCL Engineering Sciences, said: "Many students are not following through to an engineering career and that is a real risk to our long term success as a nation of innovators."

"Most students take engineering because they are driven to understand how the world works, from taking radios apart when they were children, to creating apps in high school."

"Engineering is about creative problem-solving and it’s exactly what we hope to instil in them again with the IoT Kit, which provides the tools and the knowledge to create devices and systems that could one day become best-sellers or even change our world."

ARM’s CTO Mike Muller also said: "Students with strong science and mathematical skills are in demand and we need to make sure they stay in engineering."

"The growth of the IoT gives us a great opportunity to prove to students why our profession is more exciting and sustainable than others. New technologies make it far easier to start a business and and there’s a huge appetite for highly motivated young people to help companies such as ARM deliver innovation that will shape the world’s future."